Family Finance: Teaching Others to Teach Yourself

By Dr. Mayowa Olusoji, The Money Smart Coach

We have arrived at the final week of this twenty-one-week journey. Your child has learned to earn, save, invest, protect, negotiate, decide wisely, build a reputation, invest in themselves, and create value. They have moved from financial illiteracy to financial wisdom, from passenger to driver.

Now comes the lesson that locks everything in place: teaching others.

There is a principle in learning called the Feynman Technique: the best way to deepen your own understanding is to teach it to someone else. Teaching exposes the gaps in your knowledge and forces you to explain simply. But something deeper happens too: you shift from consuming knowledge to creating it. You are no longer just getting wealthier; you are making others wealthier. No longer just solving your own problems, you are solving your family’s and your community’s problems.

Your child now knows things most adults never learn: the difference between needs and wants, how compound interest works, how to spot marketing manipulation, how to build a reputation, how to negotiate, how to create value. These are rare gifts. The final challenge is to give them away.

This doesn’t mean becoming a financial coach (though they might, one day). It means explaining the three jars to a younger sibling. It means telling a cousin why they shouldn’t fear the stock market. It means showing a friend the real cost of debt.

When they do this, their own understanding deepens, their confidence grows, and their sense of purpose sharpens. They move from building wealth for themselves to building wealth systems for everyone around them.

This is the highest level of financial literacy, not the accumulation of money, but the multiplication of understanding. As the old saying goes: give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day; teach them to fish, and you feed them for life; teach them to teach others to fish, and you change a community.

Your child has been taught to fish. Now teach them to teach.

 This week’s challenge: The Teaching Moment

Have your child pick one person- a sibling, cousin, or friend, who could benefit from a lesson they’ve learned. Just one idea: the three jars, needs vs. wants, the power of tracking. Have them teach it, notice what questions come up, and discover what they didn’t know they didn’t know.

 Dinner table question this week:

“Looking back over these twenty-one weeks, what one lesson changed how you think about money? How would you explain it to someone hearing it for the first time?”

The final investment is in others. It multiplies infinitely, and once made, can never be taken away.

The more your child learns, the more they will discover how little they know. That is exactly as it should be.

This is not the end. This is the beginning.

Dr. Mayowa Olusoji
The Money Smart Coach

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